One of three modern artists who dominated
20th century Mexican painting - the others being Diego
Rivera (1886-1957) and Jose Clemente Orozco
(1883-1949) - the politically active David Alfaro Siqueiros played a leading
role in the Mexican revival of mural
painting fostered by President Alvaro Obregon (1880-1928). A member
of the Communist Party and a champion of the propagandist art movement
known as socialist realism,
his aim was to create a type of public art
that was valuable to the people. Although he only completed his first
Mexican wall painting in 1939, thereafter his output - in terms of both
oils and fresco paintings - was prodigious.
HisMexican murals
were more vigorous, colourful and emotionally intense than those of his
two compatriots. He was also highly innovative, often experimenting with
new painting materials. His last masterpiece was his Polyforum Siqueiros
(1971) in Mexico City - an auditorium combining architectural design with
painting and sculpture. He was also noted for his printmaking,
in particular his engraving
and lithography. In 1967
he received the USSR-sponsored Lenin Peace Prize. In 1968 he was elected
President of the newly formed Mexican Academy of Fine Arts.

Life and Work

Along with the modern
artists Diego Rivera and Jose Orozco, David Siqueiros spearheaded
the Mexican muralist movement. Like them, he was a socialist who sought
to depict the troubles and sufferings of his people in painting,
and thus establish a national identity for his country after the Mexican
Revolution (1910-1921) with his murals for public buildings. Siqueiros
was the most radical of the trio. An avowed Marxist all his life, he espoused
the idea of "collective art" - meaning, a modern type of history
painting that would educate the proletariat in Marxist ideology. He
rarely used an easel, deeming it "bourgeois" preferring industrial
paints and methods, such as enamel paint and a spray gun. Influenced by
indigenous Mexican peoples and travels that saw him exposed to Cubism
in Paris and the Sistine
Chapel frescoes in Italy, Siqueiro's own figure
painting depicts heroic, muscular peasants and everyday workers struggling
against invaders, totalitarian regimes and capitalist oppressors.

His politics led to periods of exile from
Mexico in 1932 and 1940, the latter after his part in an assassination
attempt on the Russian emigre Leon Trotsky. He managed to turn
such periods into opportunities by travelling to the United States, where
he received commissions for murals for public buildings. Nevertheless,
his revolutionary spirit was unabated, and from 1960 he spent three years
in a US prison for inciting a riot. On his return to Mexico City, he completed
his last and largest work, at Polyforum Cultural Siqueiros, the epic work
known as The March of Humanity on Earth and Toward the Cosmos (1965-1971).
The mural fulfills his dream for collective art on a monumental scale
- portraying the history of mankind and decorating the building both inside
and out. Larger than Michelangelo Buonarotti's Genesis
fresco on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, the work was nicknamed the
"Capilla Siqueiros".

Selected Paintings

An iconic figure of modern
art in Mexico, 20th-century
paintings by David Alfaro Siqueiros can be seen either in situ,
or in some of the leading art museums in Central and North America. Here
is a short list of his best known works.

- Portrait of Mexico Today (1932)
Santa Barbara Museum of Art.
- Collective Suicide (1936) Museum of Modern Art, New York.
- Echo of Scream (1937) Museum of Modern Art, New York.
- War (1939) Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
- For the Complete safety of All Mexicans at Work (1954) Hospital
dela Raza.
- The March of Humanity on Earth and Toward the Cosmos (1965-1971)
(Polyforum Cultural Siqueiros, Mexico City)